Broken dialogue

Lack of transparency

Lack of trust

in land transformation data reduces confidence in decision making process

Our solution

We’ve built a platform that puts every South African citizen back into the land transformation story.

Anyone can find their own or someone else’s land on our platform and tell their land story - thereby creating a space where people can be heard, shape a healthy dialogue between all stakeholders, make land data more transparent, and build trust and confidence in the decision making process.

13% land data received

What about my privacy?

We will never expose your identity to the public. In other words, personal details like your name, email and cell number will never be shown and associated with the land you have identified and then made visible to the public.

More questions? We've got answers...

Who is LandSTORY?

LandSTORY is a non profit initiative formed in 2018 and backed by South Africans of all colours to help tell and change the story of our land. Our aim is to provide an unbiased land ownership and story telling platform where people can tell their land stories.

We want to create a place where people move from frustration and not being heard, to shaping the land transformation decision making process. We want land transformation initiatives, and the data surrounding them, to become more transparent and visible for anyone on the street to see. We want to help facilitate a healthy dialogue between all stakeholders. And we want to help build up trust and confidence in decision makers.

LandSTORY's mission is to involve South African citizens to help tell and change the story of our land.

Why don’t you just use the deeds office’s data?

A deeds office’s main purpose is to maintain public records and documents of real estate ownership. Although the South African deeds office records have been used quite extensively in land transformation reports, it does have certain limitations.

The first limitation is that it currently does not keep record of ownership by race. This is quite an important criteria to understand the effectiveness of land transformation projects and policies. The second limitation is that it does not contain any crop production data. The president stated that food security and our economy will not be impacted by any land transformation policy changes.

Therefore, knowing how productive the land is right now and in the future, is a crucial component to measure the effectiveness of any new initiatives.

What if someone makes a mistake and identify land incorrectly?

We are humans and as humans we make mistakes. It is therefore inevitable that some land will be identified incorrectly. However, the great thing about crowdsourcing is that it has a cross verification network effect. The more people that participate, the higher the likelihood of picking up mistakes.

Let’s look at a simple example: If Sarah identifies someone else’s land as having a white owner and later on Thabo identifies the same land as having a black owner, we know someone has made a mistake which we can investigate and correct. Even though this is a very simple case, we can now imagine a scenario where the accuracy of the data increases exponentially as the number of people participating increases.

What will you do with money sponsored?

All financial support will go to the development and support of the platform including better story and data integration, building growth and yield models, hiring of more people, marketing to reach every corner of South Africa, etc.

If you want to contribute financially, check out our partners page.

Can I verify someone else’s land?

Yes, absolutely!

If you know someone who owns a piece of land, even though it’s not yours (like your neighbour or friend) and even though you might not know certain details like whether it is in a trust or a company, we’d like to encourage you to identify it. Over time, identifying other people’s land is the #1 way to increase the accuracy of the data.

You can read more about how we handle incorrect data in one of other FAQ's.

What about my privacy?

We will never expose your identity to the public. In other words, personal details like your name, email and cell number will never be shown and associated with the land you have identified and then made visible to the public.

The data we display publicly will be information like land size, crops and type of ownership (race, private/company).